LETTER XI

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.


You both nettled and alarmed me, my dearest Miss Howe, by the
concluding part of your last. At first reading it, I did not think it
necessary, said I to myself, to guard against a critic, when I was
writing to so dear a friend. But then recollecting myself, is there
not more in it, said I, than the result of a vein so naturally lively?
Surely I must have been guilty of an inadvertence. Let me enter into
the close examination of myself which my beloved friend advises.

I do so; and cannot own any of the glow, any of the throbs you
mention.--Upon my word I will repeat, I cannot. And yet the passages
in my letter, upon which you are so humourously severe, lay me fairly
open to your agreeable raillery. I own they do. And I cannot tell
what turn my mind had taken to dictate so oddly to my pen.

But, pray now--is it saying so much, when one, who has no very
particular regard to any man, says, there are some who are preferable
to others? And is it blamable to say, they are the preferable, who
are not well used by one's relations; yet dispense with that usage out
of regard to one's self which they would otherwise resent? Mr.
Lovelace, for instance, I may be allowed to say, is a man to be
preferred to Mr. Solmes; and that I do prefer him to that man: but,
surely, this may be said without its being a necessary consequence
that I must be in love with him.